“Do you want me to go?” asked Jeffrey, taking off his coat. She turned to look at him. There had been times in their past together when she would have pushed him away, asked him to leave so that she could experience her emotions the only way she knew how, alone. She saw the worried uncertainty in his face and she felt a wash of sadness; she’d often treated him badly and the memory of it hurt her.
“No,” she said. “Stay with me.”
He smiled at her and sank into the couch. She knelt on the floor near his legs, leaned into the box. Inside were stacks of large leather photo albums, color faded, edges frayed with age. On top rested a single letter. There were five albums in total. She lifted one out at a time and stacked them on the floor between her and Jeffrey. He leaned in, resting his forearms on his thighs.
She sat on the floor beside Jeffrey, her shoulder resting against his leg. She took the letter in her hand, and broke the seal, unfolded the single page inside. The handwriting was thick and uncertain, the author pressing so hard in places that the ink pooled and blotched. She read the words aloud so that Jeffrey could hear.
Dear Lydia,
You can probably guess the kind of man I am, if you don’t already know from the letters I’ve sent you over the years. I have no reason to think you’ve ever read any of them. Maybe you just threw them in the trash unopened; or maybe they were kept from you. I know your grandparents aren’t especially fond of me. Never were. Can’t blame them really. There’s a voice inside of me that tells me you’ve never seen them. You’re a curious one, I know. I don’t think you could have stayed away, had you known I’d been trying to reach you.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, I guess I’ve taken leave of this place. I can’t say I’m sorry to go. When you’ve spent most of your life making a mess of things, trying in your own pathetic way to clean up and then making even more mess, it starts to get a bit wearing. I don’t imagine anyone will be shedding any tears. Not you, certainly. Not your half-sister, Estrellita or her mother Jaynie.
Some of the biggest mistakes I made involved your mother. I’d say, though you probably won’t believe me, that she was the great love of my life. Life with Jaynie was a lot easier, don’t get me wrong. Though I eventually screwed that up, too. But the love I felt for your mother… nothing ever came close to that again. Her death haunts me still today. I ask myself the question I know you must have asked yourself a thousand times. If I had stayed, would she still be with us? If I had been a different kind of husband and father, where would we all be? I think about her every night, remember her as she was when I married her. There are photos of the three of us enclosed that I know you’ve never seen. And I’m willing to bet that the woman there will be unrecognizable. When I met her, she was funny and full of passion, a prankster and a lover and there was this light inside her. I’ll admit to you that I’m the one that snuffed out that light with my cruelty and irresponsibility. And then when it was gone, I couldn’t bear to see her burned out and empty. I left her and you. But, Lydia, trust me, it was my loss. I truly believe you were better off without me.
I’m leaving these albums to you so that you can see that your mother and I shared happy times. That I held you in my arms and loved you like a father should. That as a family, we knew great joy for a short time. And most importantly, that I was always a part of your life whether you knew it or not.
I could tell you how sorry I am and try to convince you of how much I love you. I could tell you that I’ve lived my life in regret for all the mistakes I’ve made. But instead I’ll tell you the only thing I’ve learned for sure about this life:
The past disappears into the air like smoke. We might catch its scent when the wind shifts but it is irretrievable, no matter how long we gaze after it wishing. The bad thing about this is that sometimes the consequences, the charred remains of our lives cannot be repaired. The good thing is, smoke can’t bind you. It can’t hold you prisoner. Only rage and regret can do that. You always can move forward, whether you deserve to or not.
Your father,
Arthur James Tavernier
The air in the apartment seemed heavy and silent when Lydia stopped reading. She waited for tears that didn’t come, then she reached for one of the photo albums and moved up on the couch beside Jeffrey. She felt his eyes and turned to meet them.
“How are you doing?” he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in and putting his lips on her forehead.
She shook her head slowly, sank into him.
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling a little numb. “Sad, I suppose. But okay.”
He nodded. She flipped the lid of the photo album, one side resting on her lap, the other resting on Jeffrey. The photos were black and white, darkened and yellowing with age. But there was something so beautiful about them, about the happy couple captured there.
Her mother laughed in the arms of a fair, handsome man with light eyes and a wide, generous smile. She leaned her head against his shoulder, her mouth open, her eyes moist with her happiness.
Marion Strong straddled a motorcycle, a young woman flirting with whomever held the camera, her hands on the grips, her eyes half-lidded. Sexy, mischievous, the light her father had mentioned blasting out of her like klieg.
There were others like this; her father had been right. The woman in the photographs was nothing like the woman Lydia knew. She was dancing, she was laughing with abandon, she was sexy and flirting with the man she loved. The woman Lydia had known had been exacting and sometimes cold, never cruel, always loving, but uncompromising and strict. Surely, she’d never been young the way the woman in the photographs was young, she’d never known that kind of joy or abandon.
Tavernier held a dark-haired child with storm-cloud eyes. The little girl had her tiny arms wrapped around his neck, her head against his face. They both showed wide smiles for the camera. He was movie-star handsome with beautiful pronounced cheekbones and a strong ridge of a nose. In his eyes she saw a great capacity for humor.
She was glad to know her mother had been happy once and sad to never have witnessed it firsthand; she was glad that her mother had loved her father but sorry Marion had never shared the happy times with her. She flipped the page.
The later photos in the album showed Lydia from a distance: Lydia outside the church at her first communion, looking sweet and gazing up at her mother from beneath a veil; Lydia’s high-school graduation, where she stood on the stage, looking too thin and not smiling at all. He’d been there for all those things, standing apart in the crowd, taking pictures for an album. The thought made her tired, sad, and a little angry that he’d always been within reach. That’s when the frustrated feeling of regret came and settled in her bones.
Lydia flipped through a few more pages and then shut the cover. She gazed at the pile of letters on the table. It was too much, the pain in her chest, the ache in her head. Too much lost that could never be found. She placed the book on the table and turned to her husband. She put her hands on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him. She put her lips to his and breathed him in.
“You can finish tomorrow,” he said softly. He bent and lifted the album from her lap and stacked it on top of the others.
“I love you,” she whispered. He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. He stood and pulled her to her feet. They walked upstairs to their bedroom and made love until the present drowned out the past and until Lydia remembered that she was not a lost girl, but a woman found and claimed by herself.
Thirty